Los Angeles, also, has its Chinatown, which in its manners and customs is, fortunately, as distinct from the American portion of the city as if it were an island in the Pacific; but it gave me an odd sensation to be able to pass at once from the handsome, active settlement of the Anglo-Saxon into the stupidity of Mexico, or the heathenism of China.

[Illustration:  Plaza and adobe church, Los Angeles.]

[Illustration:  Broadway, Los Angeles.]

“How can I distinguish here a native Californian from an eastern man?” I asked a resident.

“There are no native Californians,” was the somewhat exaggerated reply; “this is not only a modern, but an eastern city.  Nine-tenths of our inhabitants came here from the East less than fifteen years ago, many of them less than five.  We are an old people with a new home.”

Ostrich rearing is now a profitable industry of California, and farms have been established for this purpose at half a dozen points in the southern section of the State.  Two of them are in the vicinity of Los Angeles, and well repay a visit; for, if one is unacquainted with the habits of these graceful birds, there is instruction as well as amusement in studying their appearance, character, and mode of life.  My first view of the feathered bipeds was strikingly spectacular.  As every one knows, the ostrich is decidedly decollete as well as utterly indifferent to the covering of its legs.  Accordingly a troop of them, as they came balancing and tiptoeing toward me, reminded me of a company of ballet dancers tripping down the stage.  While the head of the ostrich is unusually small, its eyes are large and have an expression of mischief which gives warning of danger.  During a visit to one of the farms, I saw a male bird pluck two hats from unwary men, and it looked wicked enough to have taken their heads as well, had they not been more securely fastened.  It is sometimes sarcastically asserted that the ostrich digests with satisfaction to itself such articles as gimlets, nails, and penknives; but this is a slander.  It needs gravel, like all creatures of its class which have to grind their food in an interior grist-mill; but though it will usually bite at any bright object, it will not always swallow it.  I saw one peck at a ribbon on a lady’s hat, and, also, at a pair of shears in its keeper’s hands, but this was no proof that it intended to devour either.  On another occasion, an ostrich snatched a purse from a lady’s hand and instantly dropped it; but when a gold piece fell from it, the bird immediately swallowed that, showing how easily even animals fall under the influence of Californian lust for gold.

[Illustration:  An ostrich Farm.]

[Illustration:  Orange grove avenue, Pasadena.]